Free Republic

It will take place in Pembrokeshire on St David's DayWales is set to host its first alcohol-free beer festival in a bid to encourage the public to adopt a healthier relationship with booze. The free event, which will be held in Pembrokeshire on St David’s Day, promises to offer a wide range of alcohol-free and low-alcohol beers to sample. It will also be serving up free meat and vegetable curries to the sober visitors, as well as traditional Welsh cawl. Andrew Misell, from the charity Alcohol Concern , laid down a challenge to the drinks business in Wales to do...

It's supposed to answer any question posed to it, making life easier for owners of the device. But the Amazon Echo has been caught out trying to pronounce the 58 letters of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. The Echo and its virtual assistant called Alexa, was a popular Christmas gift this year Alexa performs tasks at the vocal request of her owner – including internet shopping. It is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic and other real time information. It can also control several smart devices using itself as a home...

An obscure private firm hired by the State Department over internal objections to protect U.S. diplomats in Benghazi just months before the American ambassador and three others were killed was staffed with hastily recruited locals with terror ties who helped carry out the attack, multiple sources told Fox News. The explosive charge against Wales-based Blue Mountain Group comes from several sources, including an independent security specialist who has implemented training programs at U.S. Consulates around the world, including in Benghazi, where he trained a local militia that preceded Blue Mountain. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Blue...

According to a new report from Fox News correspondents Adam Housley and Malia Zimmerman, guards hired through a contractor by the State Department to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi were unvetted, local militia members who belonged to terrorist groups Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia.   An obscure private firm hired by the State Department over internal objections to protect U.S. diplomats in Benghazi just months before the American ambassador and three others were killed was staffed with hastily recruited locals with terror ties who helped carry out the attack, multiple sources told Fox News.

The whole nation joined a tiny Welsh village for a minute's silence - to remember the lives of the 144 people who died when a rock slide hit Pantglas Junior School For an entire generation, the word Aberfan instantly evokes heartbreaking memories of one of the worst disasters in British history. The small Welsh village will on Friday mark the tragic events of 50 years ago which wiped out a generation of children in a matter of minutes.

Mohammed is the most popular name for boys in England and Wales- but it doesn't top the official list because there are so many different ways to spell it. There were 7,361 children born last year called Mohammed, Muhammed, Mohammad or Mohamed, according to the Office for National Statistics, which would have made it the number one boys name if the variations were taken into account. Instead it is Oliver that tops the boys' list while Amelia dominates the girls' figures, with 6,941 and 5,158 children given those names respectively.

<p>A hardline Muslim preacher suspected of radicalising three British jihadis told teenage disciples that it is ‘permissible’ under Islam to have sex slaves.</p> <p>Ali Hammuda, an Imam at a Cardiff mosque where three young jihadis from the city worshipped before travelling to Syria to join Islamic State, also told the group of boys as young as 13 that the ‘day of judgment is close’ – a key part of IS’s warped propaganda.</p>

An Imam has told his congregation in Wales that war is approaching and Islam allows them to take women as slaves and rape them. Ali Hammuda is an Imam at Cardiff’s Al-Manar Mosque, where three Islamic State (IS) fighters worshipped before travelling to Syria. They were known as the “Cardiff jihadis” before one was killed in an RAF drone strike as he was thought to be plotting attacks in the UK. Before the strike, Reyaad Khan and Nasser Muthana, then both 20, appeared in an IS recruiting video in 2014 where they bragged about executing prisoners. Muthana’s younger brother Aseel,...

WASHINGTON/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - The State Department's decision to hire Blue Mountain Group to guard the ill-fated U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, entrusted security tasks to a little-known British company instead of the large firms it usually uses in overseas danger zones. The contract was largely based on expediency, U.S. officials have said, since no one knew how long the temporary mission would remain in the Libyan city. The cradle of last year's uprising that ended Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule, Benghazi has been plagued by rising violence in recent months. Security practices at the diplomatic compound, where Blue Mountain...

Skeletons uncovered at a Pembrokeshire burial site may be the remains of contemporaries of the Patron Saint of Wales, archaeologists believe. The discovery was made during the third and final excavation at St Patrick's Chapel at Whitesands Bay, St Davids. It found Christian burial sites dating from the early-6th Century when St David was a bishop. This means a medieval plot found during a previous dig there was not the earliest use of the site. Phil Bennett, cultural heritage manager for the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, which supported the dig, said: "Without doubt some of the people buried in...

On Friday and Saturday (8-9 July 2016), the leaders of the 28 NATO Allies and many partner nations will meet for a landmark Warsaw Summit. Together, they will take decisions to enhance the Alliance’s security by strengthening its deterrence and defence, and projecting stability beyond its borders. Allies will agree to deploy four robust and multinational battalions to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, on a rotational basis. A multinational framework brigade in Romania will provide a tailored presence in south-eastern Europe. NATO will also take further steps to improve cyber defences, civil preparedness and to defend against ballistic missile attack...

A nation has come before my courts attention, Its leader creating his own ascension, The cries of the innocent brought before me, Torture and murder with blasphemy, Turning his back to My very Throne(Jeremiah 17:13), Creating a temporal one of his own, Causing his subjects through fear to give him fame, Trying his best to erase My Name("Jesus Christ"), No fear of The Creator has he, So now he shall meet the angel of death and catastrophe, A boy attempting to become a man, But very soon will lose his land, The hand "is" writing on the wall, This man's...

The Preseli stones from Stonehenge are approximately double the weight as the experimental block, but it is possible that one huge stone could have been brought by a group of just 20 people. The community living in the area during the Neolithic would have numbered several thousand so the absence of just a few dozen people was unlikely to cause any hardship. Doctoral student Barney Harris, who conducted the trial in Gordon Square, London, a stone's throw from UCL's Institute of Archaeology, said he was surprised that so few people had been required to move the block. "We were expecting...

This is the story of a ferocious army determined to rescue their queen from a metal fortress. Or, viewed another way, a swarm of bees who, for two days, followed their queen bee trapped inside a Mitsubishi Outlander. The Outlander belongs to Carol Howarth, a 68-year-old grandmother, who had no idea she’d picked up a tiny winged passenger when she visited a nature reserve. Later, when she stopped to go shopping in Haverfordwest, West Wales, the bees descended – thousands and thousands of them. Tom Moses, who works as a Pembrokeshire Coast National Park ranger, was driving by when he...

Unless you live under a rock in a very shady part of the forest or in England or Wales, you have no doubt heard of the peculiar domestic arrangements of the world’s most famous gay marriage. The British musician Elton John and his husband David Furnish, who married last December after several years in a civil partnership, have been in tabloid headlines around the world after revelations that Mr Furnish has been involved in trysts with other men. Except, however, in England and Wales, where publication of anything about the sordid affair has been gagged.

The head of the Church in Wales has apologised "unreservedly" to gay couples for prejudice in the church. Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan spoke at a meeting of the governing body in Llandudno on Wednesday. The church tweeted "Archbishop of Wales offers a pastoral letter on same-sex relationships apologising unreservedly for prejudice within the church." Last year, Dr Morgan said it would be "foolish" to bring forward a bill for same-sex marriages in church. A statement released by the church said although it was not ready to allow or bless same-sex marriages, "the debate is not over". It went...

LONDON (Reuters) - British police raided an English country pub this week in search of a stolen wooden relic believed by some to be the Holy Grail - a cup from which, according to the Bible, Jesus is said to have drunk at his final meal before crucifixion.

Digitized from the LP shown above, "Dylan Thomas Reading Volume 1," issued on the Caedmon label in 1964, catalogue number TC 1002. Recorded February 22, 1952 at Steinway Hall in New York.

Author Adam Ardrey claims that instead of the romantic English king of legend who lived at Camelot – which is often said to be Tintagel in Cornwall or in Wales – Arthur was actually Arthur Mac Aedan, the sixth-century son of an ancient King of Scotland, whose Camelot was a marsh in Argyll. He also suggests that Arthur pulled the sword Excalibur from a stone at Dunadd near Kilmartin, died near Falkirk and was buried on the Hebridean island of Iona, which he declares to be Avalon. Ardrey, an amateur historian who works as an advocate in Edinburgh and previously...

Archaeologist Steve Burrow made the discovery after reading a book by Sir Norman Lockyear published almost 100 years ago... Sir Norman - the man who discovered helium - had travelled to the site, otherwise known as the Hill of Black Grove, and measured the alignment of the sun at Easter... "I came across this reference in a book dating back to 1908 but nobody had checked it, nobody had gone and verified it in person," he said... Mr Burrow, a curator of Neolithic archaeology at the National Museum of Wales, delayed his book by a year to test the theory....